A couple of things have happened in the last two weeks that on some strange level seem linked to me. There was the outrageous slur by Senator David Lyonhjelm against fellow Senator and Green Party member Sarah Hanson-Young. Then the other day we woke up to the news that the World Cup qualifying basketball game between Australia and the Philippines had ended in farce after a massive on-court scrap. The link? Well both were asymmetric responses to a provocation.

That had me thinking about how drama -and those two events certainly were laden with drama. It appears to be a much greater factor in society and the workplace right now. More than ever – and certainly not helped by The Donald – we are fixing our positions on subjects and then hanging on to that anchor point, often without much research to ground our position. Too bad for you if we aren’t in accord with some other person. Not only will they take issue with you on that issue, but they’re highly likely to write you off altogether. To some degree, I blame Facebook with the concept of ‘unfriending’.

Remember the same sex marriage debate? I listened to a podcast where the subject of unfriending somebody if you found they were on the opposite side of you in that particular debate, was the topic du jour. The ‘panel’ was millennials and their consensus was that you should unfriend without much regard and move on. Why waste time on people who don’t share your beliefs and attitudes was the commonly held opinion. It’s called tolerance that’s why!

I also blame reality TV. Let’s face it, the younger generation have had a pretty strict diet of reality shows as the backdrop to their upbringing. At least the dramas of my generation with the likes of ‘Lost in Space’ and High Chaparral were easily recognizable as fictional. A consistent feature in each and every reality show is the concept of drama – more often than not fabricated or confected. In some shows the drama gets resolved within the arc of the episode, but you can bet your bottom dollar it will be there again in the next episode. Add to the mix that we are told we need to create a brand for ourselves and constantly create a narrative – read as dramatic story – and you can see how drama is now a constant in our lives. Your chances of being successful on a music talent show appear to be lessened if you cannot magic some story to pluck the heartstrings of the audience – whose phone/text votes keep you in the competition. No wonder our younger generation is seeking drama. It’s like oxygen to them.

Back to the Senate. Without a doubt, both houses of Parliament are theatrical and all too often there are polarised viewpoints that are argued ad-nauseam at the expense of good policy, manners and tolerance. It’s as though, sometimes, we want to create the mayhem and havoc to belittle our opponent, or wind them up where their loss of control causes them to overstep the mark. Having watched a lot of sport, it is a tactic used in that arena sometimes to great effect to create provocation that results in a sanction against the provocatee and seldom any sanction for the provocateur. As we are currently in the midst of the World Cup football this brings to mind the response of Zinedine Zidane for France against Italy when he head-butted his opponent, Marco Materazzi in a World Cup final no less! A classic example to prove my point. The provocation…. a racial slur, the response over the top and pretty much what everyone remembers from the event.

In the basketball match I’m advised that the aggression by the Pilipinno players was as a result of constant jibes about the loss of their ‘super hero’ boxing champion Manny Pacquiao to Aussie boxer Jeff Horn. The response by Daniel Kickert, leading with his forearm, when a fellow player was roughly dealt with was clearly inappropriate and fair play to him he has since said he regretted it. Heaps of drama though right? 1,069, 294 views of the fight on You Tube to be exact and climbing!

And so it was with Lyonhjelm, who delivered a metaphorical verbal forearm to Hanson-Young. Excessive, inappropriate and not at all helpful. Why he hasn’t expressed regret like Kickert is beyond most rational folks but he is a wily politician and perhaps he is thriving on the drama of it all? What he missed with his vulgar riposte was the opportunity to focus on the provocation by Hanson-Young which as a result of the furor he created in the media has slipped well and truly under the radar. To label ‘men’ or ‘all men as rapists’ is inflammatory and does not one jot of good in improving the lives of women who are subject to sexual harassment, family and intimate partner violence or inequality.

Hanson-Young may use in her defense that she was speaking her truth. She might argue she was raising awareness of issues of violence against women (especially in the immediate days after the death of Eurydice Dixon – read my previous blog). Raising awareness without taking action though is merely storytelling. It’s actions that really count. Caroline Myss put it really effectively at a seminar I attended a few years back. Someone asked her a question about their personal relationship and how the person could get their partner to listen when they were speaking their truth. Myss, in characteristic fashion, upbraided the person and commented that speaking your truth is pure BS. Concentrate rather, she bluntly stated, on living your truth. There is a great lesson here for our politicians.

In society, and therefore the workplace, we are in danger of letting polarized views taint relationships that should otherwise be based on mutual respect, valuing skill sets of others, team effort and the achievement of common goals for the benefit of the business and thereby everyone within it. It is possible to retain friendships with people whose values may have diverted from yours. The danger all too often is we take one ideological perspective and extrapolate it for that person entirely, without checking first their views on a range of other issues. For example, a less than liberal approach to say same sex marriage may well lead someone to believe their old school friend is also anti-assisted dying without actually ever finding out. I’m forever surprised by the rich tapestry that is people and finding that within conservative perspectives there are often flashes of liberalism and vice versa. Case in point is George Brandis who recently departed from the Senate. His politics are of the right but gave one of the most effective and moving speeches against One Nation leader and fellow senator when she wore a Burka into the Senate to make her race-laden point. Go figure!

Let’s have more good manners in our political arenas, work places and communities. Taking satisfaction from being victimized and amplifying it to create drama is not where our energies should be going. Let’s hear less of the S words (‘slut’ and ‘shag’) and more “let’s agree to disagree on that” Lets focus on addressing real concerns within both the world of women and of men. Let’s reach out. To quote C S Lewis:

‘Each day we are becoming a creature of splendid glory, or one of unthinkable horror’.’ If we could just give a bit more emphasis to the former, we are much less likely to become the latter! Less witch more lion please!

When I don’t get enough sleep I find myself the next day in meetings using big words, sometimes without being entirely sure whether they are being used in the right context. An example this week was when I was making a point about us all needing to agree and understand one another and I surprised myself by saying we need a ‘lingua franca’. I’d like to put this down to an amazing IQ but actually we grew up in a family without television. At the time I thought my parents were Luddites. Now I think of them as really radical. To keep ourselves occupied we read books and listened to the wireless. You are entirely wasting your time talking Hogan’s Heroes or Gilligan’s Island with me. Want to talk the Goon Show though – that’s a whole different kettle of fish.

I love the term ‘lingua franca’ – it sounds like you are smart when you say it and it rolls in the mouth like a melting lolly. That got me in reflective mode. We actually do need a lingua franca in business and in the world at the moment. I think many manager’s agree. Where the disagreement is, much to the chagrin of Lucy Kellaway (of AFR and Financial Times fame), in what form this common language should be. At times I despair when it clichéd and vacuous words that are trotted out masking true authenticity. More despairingly I find they slip into my vernacular from time to time.

The world it seems right now is desperately in need of a lingua franca. We desperately need understanding, harmony, forgiveness and peace. The world’s a mess and it’s getting messier. Possibly because I’m betting older and view it through a different prism, but we are getting more and more divided. Whereas once we might look for what unites (a kind of lingua franca) now we seem to focus with laser precision on what separates. Let me give you a list of some of the real areas of disagreement which I think are becoming deep-seated fissures or schisms in society today.

The rich v the poor (or as I have heard it referred to as the haves and have yachts);

Moderates v Hardliners in the recent elections in Iran for example;

North Korea v South Korea;

Sunni v Shia;

Ideologue v pragmatist;

Conservative v progressive;

Pro-life v women’s choice;

Nerd v hipster;

Muslim v kufir/infidel;

Science v intuition;

Religion v atheism;

Evolutionists v creationists;

Republicans v Democrats;

Pro v anti-gay marriage;

Greenie v climate change denier;

Japan v Sea Shepherd; and

Union v Employer.

And the list goes on….you get the picture.

What is the reason for this ever widening gap? For me it’s a growing intolerance arising from an arrogance in one’s own deeply help position or conviction. And I partly blame TV for that. Secondarily I blame the world of academia and the increased specialisation of knowledge. Whereas once upon a time you might see an eye specialist for a problem with your eyes, nowadays the specialist may only be a specialist in 2mm of a certain part of your retina. Let me draw these threads together. The 24/7 news cycle exists on a diet of:

breaking news e.g. bomb blast in Yemen kills 50 people;

in depth reporting from a war zone e.g. background piece on the devastation caused by bombing in Sanaa;

panel discussion where a panel of experts, most often moderated by a journalist, discusses an issue.

It is the last two I believe are causing the problem. It is critical for the news services that the ‘expert’ they have on has the gravitas to carry the day. They have to have a body of knowledge and be recognised for their background, expertise and experience in the field of discussion. When the viewer ascribes this ‘expert’ status upon them the news service has its credibility boosted off the back of this. It’s a symbiotic relationship. We, the public, then get ‘educated’ in the issue and form an opinion. We know from the world of psychology that once this perspective has been imprinted it becomes very difficult to subsequently disabuse the person of their first formed beliefs even if fixed from a soundbite interview.

Those who have read/watched any Christopher Hitchens (God is Not Great) or read/watched Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) will appreciate how what should be polite disagreement between people about the existence of God, is a highly volatile and emotionally charged diatribe where the views of one party are forced down the throat of the other. It’s as though where reason cannot prevail brute force of argument might. It seems contradictory to me that the religious who believe in peace and ‘turning the other cheek’ engage in such nonsense and the atheists with their humanist underpinnings also engage in the very same thing.

Climate change is another issue where the degree of intolerance between parties of differently held beliefs is ever widening. Tolerance is going out the window as each diametrically opposed group, with wild overtones of exasperation and disbelief, throw rocks at each other. No-where is this seen more frequently than on TV between acknowledged (or perhaps more correctly alleged) experts. The frisson required to keep viewers almost always requires a diametrically opposed couple or group of experts. Not only does this make for titillating TV but it can be disguised under the pretence of providing balance.

In life, as in management, we mimic and mirror behaviours. If the so-called experts are at each other’s throats then what’s wrong with us doing this? The strident nature of the arguments presented get internalised and memorized because just parroting back the argument (in all its sound-bite beauty) is a lot easier than using Google or a library to do further research. Sure, use the interview to posit a hypothesis, but we should at least get off the couch and prove or disprove it with research, reflection and intuition. That’s the first thing. The second important point is that the experts despite seemingly being ‘experts’ may not be what they say. Being on TV does not afford them any extra credibility than seeing a product with the ‘As seen on TV” label on the box. The age-old adage of ‘just because they say it’s so doesn’t mean it is so’ holds up against the test of time.

I always reflect that these panellists, or experts, are often referred to as commentators. When listening to horse racing commentators as a child I was sure that who they said came first, second and third was almost always right, except when it was a photo finish and sometimes, not often, the horse they called first did not get the Stewards’ nod. So it is with current affairs commentators. They are opinion expressers with some background in the issues at best. With so many of them out there they often will raise their voices to get heard. When on a panel, especially on Fox (Sky) this seems to come to the fore more often than not.

It doesn’t have to be like this. Just imagine a panel discussion where each panellist quietly and politely disagreed with the other party and then each started talking using a lingua franca on the issues upon which they do agree. Probably wouldn’t get great ratings though. With looming elections in the US with the deeply divisive Trump and Clinton we can expect a diet of raucous and irrational expert panels. With an election looming in Australia we can regrettably expect the same.

It’s important we find common ground in life and especially in the workplace. Diversity is an important aspect of a balanced organisation and this means hiring people of differing views. The respectful acknowledgement of others’ views to create overall harmony is important too. This is where for many young adults they learn their first lessons in tolerance. At school if you don’t agree with someone you drift to a different social group – normally one that is aligned to your perspective. The need to maintain employment and income is often a driver to keep people in the workplace where they are not entirely aligned to the prevailing views. To make this work the members within that organisation need to be tolerant and reach out and connect on the issues they have in common.

When we think about it we have so much more in common than the things we don’t agree on. Our DNA sees to that as Dawkins would say. Let’s look to those things that bind us and that we can agree on…hey everyone what’s on telly tonight?